SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Rose Zhang received nearly all the pieces there may be in newbie golf.
With a flawless efficiency on the NCAA Championships, the Stanford sophomore now has carried out one thing nobody else has, not even Lorena Ochoa: win back-to-back nationwide titles.
Zhang shot a bogey-free, 4-under 68 on Monday to turn out to be the primary girl to win a number of nationwide titles and tie the NCAA file for wins in a season.
“I used to be actually lucky to play similtaneously Lorena Ochoa and I felt her greatness was unmatched,” Stanford coach Anne Walker stated. “Rose Zhang actually jogs my memory plenty of Lorena.”
Zhang turns 20 on Wednesday already with a full newbie resume. She received the U.S. Girls’s Novice in 2020, the U.S. Ladies’ Junior in 2021 and the Augusta Nationwide Girls’s Novice final month.
Beginning 4 pictures again, Zhang made up floor and was up one when San Jose State’s Lucia Lopez-Ortega made consecutive bogeys. Zhang saved par on Grayhawk Golf Membership’s par-4 seventeenth gap with a fragile chip and tapped in for par on No. 18.
Zhang completed at 10-under 278 over 72 holes to match Ochoa’s NCAA data for wins in a season (eight) and profession (12). Her 12 wins breaks the Stanford file for males or ladies, held by Tiger Woods and three others.
Zhang helped Stanford safe the highest seed heading into Tuesday’s match play in its bid to win consecutive nationwide titles.
“Once you’re chasing from behind, you actually do not know what is going on till all the pieces’s accomplished,” Zhang stated. “To come back off of 18 and everybody saying you simply received, that is one thing that I would not actually have imagined beginning out the day.”
Lopez-Ortega closed out her spherical with a birdie to shoot 71. She tied for second at 9 underneath with Southern California’s Catherine Park, who missed a brief birdie putt on the par-5 18th that might have tied her with Zhang.
Zhang had a record-breaking freshman season, setting the NCAA’s single-season scoring mark at 69.68 whereas successful particular person and crew championships. She has been even higher this season, arriving within the desert with a 68.70 scoring common.
Zhang’s win is her eighth in 10 begins this season, together with the Pac-12 Championships and the NCAA Pullman Regional.
Zhang made up a four-shot deficit shortly on Park, the in a single day chief, by turning the entrance 9 in 3-under 33 at Grayhawk’s Raptor Course. Zhang rolled in a birdie on the par-5 eleventh to achieve 10 underneath, however Lopez-Ortega tied her with a birdie on the par-3 fifth after beginning on the entrance 9.
When Lopez-Ortega fell off with consecutive bogeys, the stage was set for Zhang.
She hit a superb drive on the par-5 18th, leaving 195 yards the opening. With water proper, Zhang nonetheless deliberate on going for the inexperienced together with her second shot, figuring at worst she’d hit it into the greenside bunker.
Then Walker stepped in, suggesting she lay up as an alternative. She did, two-putting for the title.
“She was like, ‘No, no, you’ve a one-shot lead,'” Zhang stated. “Then I believed, ‘Oh wait, perhaps I ought to rethink all the pieces that simply occurred.'”
Park received higher because the season progressed, tying for second on the Silverado Showdown and tying for third on the Pac-12 Championships. She took a two-shot lead into the ultimate spherical at Grayhawk by tying the NCAA file with a 64 within the second spherical and following with a 71 on Sunday.
Park sandwiched two birdies round a bogey on the quick par-4 sixth gap within the last particular person spherical, then had a two-putt birdie on the par-5 seventh. She saved par when a fast-running chip on the par 3 hit the flagstick, however made bogey on the par-4 ninth.
Park pushed her lead again to 2 with a curling putt on the par-4 twelfth, however a three-putt down a steep slope on the par-4 fifteenth dropped her a shot behind when Zhang dropped in a birdie at No. 11.
Park hit a superb chip shot from simply in need of the 18th gap, however pushed the birdie putt proper.
“It was a curler coaster, plenty of feelings happening,” Park stated. “I did not need to overthink it, however I used to be a little bit anxious.”
Zhang by no means was, incomes a rarified spot in ladies’s golf.
